Affleck, for his part, lauds his co-star’s performance. Asked why he didn’t cast his wife, actress Jennifer Garner, in the part, he wryly alludes to his experience with ex-mate Jennifer Lopez in Gigli (2003), saying, “My wife is a great actress. And I would be profoundly lucky to work with her. But something tells me that people don’t want to see real-life couples together.”

He also acknowledges that he values a political context in his filmmaking. “I’m not a socialist filmmaker. I don’t think you necessarily have to have a certain ideology behind the films that you make. I’m an observationalist filmmaker, I hope. Social differences are the fabric of our lives, they’re an aspect to people’s coexistence that is often studied, and from which many conclusions are often drawn. And I think it’s in the conclusions where we find a person’s ideology. Which is why I try not to draw many.”

Lynch’s left flank US Representative Stephen Lynch has held Massachusetts’s ninth congressional district since 2001 — a fact that has irritated the state’s liberals ever since.

Review: The Town There’s an episode in Chuck Hogan’s Prince of Thieves that I was sure Ben Affleck was going to include in his adaptation of the novel.

Man about Town: Chuck Hogan One day back in 2009, Chuck Hogan snuck onto the set of the movie adaptation of his own novel. He was not recognized, once, by anyone at all.

Tapped out The freedom to vacation before wrapping up vital work is just one perk of holding statewide office.

Chaos Theory In less than two weeks, when Massachusetts voters elect Martha Coakley to the US Senate — let's not pretend that Republican state senator Scott Brown has any chance of pulling off the monumental upset — they will trigger a massive domino effect that has the state's political class buzzing with anticipation.

Bay State's top lobbyists Nearly everyone in Massachusetts felt the pinch of the recession in 2009 — even Beacon Hill lobbyists had to tighten their belts.

State of the State House coverage Adam Reilly made an erroneous assumption when he bemoaned the loss of State House news coverage with the downsizing of the Boston Globe . Fortunately, Boston is still a two-newspaper town.

Review: Extract I'm hard-pressed to say, though, whether Extract is a significant leap forward for Judge in terms of story or just not as funny as his earlier work.

Can Flaherty woo Yoon? Michael Flaherty, having earned a spot Tuesday on the November ballot, starts his six-week push to the Boston mayoral final with a big problem. He needs Sam Yoon's voters, and to get them he needs Sam Yoon.

Hardboiled hub When I was growing up in Roslindale a few decades back — among tribes of ignorant, second-generation immigrant kids whose favorite words began with “f” and “n” and who liked to torture small animals and beat up small children before they moved on to their future vocations as petty criminals, dead dope users, or real-estate agents.

‘There are no rules’ On April 19, the Globe first reported that arbitrators had awarded the Boston firefighters union a 19-percent raise. By the next morning, both the Globe and the Herald were citing Menino administration figures of a $74 million cost.